An ink jet system that ejects ink from an ink jetting port such as a nozzle is used in many printers for the reason that it is small-sized and inexpensive and it can form an image without contact between the ink jet system and a printing medium. Among these ink jet systems, a piezo ink jet system that utilizes the deformation of a piezo element to jet ink and a thermal ink jet system that utilizes a boiling phenomenon of ink which is caused by thermal energy have high resolution and high-speed printing ability.
Currently, it is important tasks to attain high-speed printing and high image quality when printing an image on a non-water-absorptive recording medium such as plain paper or plastics by an ink jet printer. In particular, if it takes time to dry printed ink droplets, this easily causes image blurring, and causes adjacent ink droplets to undesirably mix with each other and, therefore, shot droplet interference occurs. These hinder the formation of a fresh and sharp image. Moreover, when images are printed on non-water-absorptive recording media, on which drying of a solvent is very slowly, it becomes necessary to dry media on which images have been recorded without piling the media immediately after printing. Here, the shot droplet interference is a phenomenon in which adjacent shot droplets aggregate into one droplet to decrease the surface energy of these droplets (decrease surface area). When adjacent liquid droplets aggregate, these liquid droplets shift from their original positions, where the droplets reach the medium. When fine lines are drawn using ink containing a colorant, the resultant lines have non-uniform widths. When a plane is drawn using such ink, the resultant plane has unevenness.
To promote curing of ink and suppress the blurring of an image and shot droplet interference, an ink for ink jet was proposed which solidifies not by volatilization of an ink solvent but by curing due to radiation (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 5-214279). However, because a pigment dispersion is used as the colorant of the ink, a nozzle is clogged by aggregation of the pigments and it is therefore difficult to eject ink stably.
To address this problem, an ultraviolet ray-curable ink including a dye, rather than a pigment, as the colorant thereof is disclosed in order to form an image superior in transparency and tone (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,303,924). However, this ink tends to cause an undesirable polymerization reaction during storage, and has unsatisfactory storage stability. Also, this ink further contains an electrically conductive salt, which may have poor solubility in the ink. Therefore, when the ink is stored for a long period of time, such a salt may precipitate, resulting in printing failures.
Techniques using ink including two liquids to react these liquids with each other on a recording medium were proposed for the purpose of achieving both storability and high-speed drying characteristics. Specifically, a method in which a solution containing a basic polymer is adhered to a recording medium and an ink containing an anionic dye is then adhered thereto (see, for example, JP-A No. 63-60783), a method in which a liquid composition containing a cationic material is applied to a recording medium and an ink containing an anionic compound and a colorant is applied thereto (see, for example, JP-A No. 8-174997), and a method in which a set of an ink including a photo-curable resin and another ink including a photo-polymerization initiator is used (see, for example, Japanese Patent No. 3,478,495) are disclosed. However, these methods are intended to suppress bleeding of an image due to the precipitation of a dye and cannot suppress the shot droplet interference. In addition, because the ink contains an aqueous solvent, it therefore dries slowly. Moreover, the dye unevenly precipitates on the recording medium, which may cause deterioration in image quality.
Accordingly, there is a need for an ink jet recording ink set which retains long-term storability and excellent fixing ability, and is suppressed in bleeding and shot droplet interference between adjacent jetted ink droplets, and makes it possible to form a high quality image.
There is also a need for an ink jet image recording method which retains excellent fixing ability, and is suppressed in bleeding and shot droplet interference between adjacent jetted ink droplets, and makes it possible to form a high quality image.